Overview/Features

Features two tuners, and have two antennas. You'll have adapter0 and adapter1 in /dev/dvb, which you can use separately.

The "Diversity" option is a hardware based feature that allows for the device's two receivers to be configured in a combined use mode to achieve better reception on a single channel. The diversity feature of the DiBcom demodulators is currently not implemented in the Linux-DVB drivers, so only the dual tuner configuration is presently supported on such devices [1].

It seems that either this tuner stick does not have a very sensitive tuner, or the small antennas that come with it are simply insufficient for real-life use, unless one lives next door to a broadcast tower and has a direct line-of-sight to it. It is thus likely that an external antenna with a builtin amplifier is needed when this tuner is used.

Components Used

Identification

Two identical looking devices are known. They can be distinguished by their USB ID:

the first device has USB ID 0ccd:005a. It is supported by the official sources (see below).

the second device has USB ID 0ccd:0081. It is supported by the official sources since 14.01.2009 - make sure your sources are up to date.

Note: 0ccd is the Vendor USB ID (VID) of TerraTec, while 005a and 0081 are the Product USB ID (PID) of the sticks.

Other Images

front

back

Input plugs

Making it Work (generic for all dib0700)

Firmware

August 21, 2008 - New firmware file fixing the last cause for i2c errors and disconnects and providing a new, more modular i2c request formatting.

August 29,2008 - Issues with Firmware 1.20. Some issues have been found with the latest version of the firmware. Users may wish to continue to use 1.10 unless they have patched their v4l-dvb code with dib0700_new_i2c_api.patch.

November 15,2008 - Issues with Firmware 1.20.

The above mentioned dib0700_new_12c_api.patch is not available discretely but is now rolled into the mercurial drivers

dvb-usb-dib0700-1.20.fw firmware file is now stable for reception, but remote control functionality is broken; any key press is repeated until the next key is pressed. The only way to get remote control functionality presently is to roll back to 1.10 firmware and suffer the occasional disconnect.

The mercurial drivers have been changed so they now load 1.20 firmware. To revert to 1.10 firmware you need to rename your firmware file to dvb-usb-dib0700-1.20.fw or provide a link of that name.

To avoid spurious remote control signals with 1.20 firmware, you need to edit /etc/modprobe.d/options or from Ubuntu onwards /etc/modprobe.d/options.confand add:

options dvb_usb disable-rc-polling=1

November 28,2008 - i2c errors.
Changes were made to the remote control drivers on November 16,2008 to correct the repeat key problem. The card is generally stable for dual tuner reception and remote control function with Firmware 1.20.

November 10,2009 - mt2060 I2C write failed.
Possible regression of a driver bug raised against Ubuntu running 2.6.27-14 and 2.6.31-2.17 causing mt2060 I2C errors in MythTV useage with firmware 1.20.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/397696
Recommend check the kernel extensions listed here for Low Noise Activation and rc_polling are loaded with correct config file name for your distribution, EIT listings information is turned off until a suitable delay (500ms-1000ms)is added to a single card (not both) and the card has correctly been added to the database as two tuners (no additional NULL entries) in the mythtv recordcard table.

dibx000_common

Remote control support

Using evdev

As long as the evdev module is loaded, a remote that is recogniced as hid device will be treated as a usb keyboard and this means that you can avoid using lirc.

However, many of the keys on your remote may generate keycodes which are not mapped to anything, by default.

In X you can use xev to find the keycodes and xmodmap to map them to useful symbols.
Unfortunately, some keys may generate keycodes that X doesn't recognize at all and the device does not support keymaps, or this would be easy to fix.

Using LIRC

Usually remote controls in linux are managed by the lirc software collection.

To get lirc up and running you need to configure some things.

Settings for the hardware

Where does lirc get its input from? aka. the DEVICE. E.g. /dev/input/event3

LIRC will use it without needing a special kernel module. use the dev/input (or devinput. Check this with the command "lircd --device=help".) driver and specify the input event device in /etc/lirc/hardware.conf

# /etc/lirc/hardware.conf
#
# Arguments which will be used when launching lircd
LIRCD_ARGS=""
#Don't start lircmd even if there seems to be a good config file
#START_LIRCMD=false
#Try to load appropriate kernel modules
LOAD_MODULES=true
# Run "lircd --driver=help" for a list of supported drivers.
DRIVER="dev/input"
# If DEVICE is set to /dev/lirc and devfs is in use /dev/lirc/0 will be
# automatically used instead
REMOTE_DEVICE="/dev/input/by-path/pci-4-1--event-ir"
MODULES=""
# Default configuration files for your hardware if any
LIRCD_CONF="/etc/lirc/lircd.conf"
LIRCMD_CONF=""

If you have REMOTE and TRANSMITTER sections in your hardware.conf file, they should look like this:

Remote key setup

Sample .lircrc

Keys repeated twice

But there is still the problem of the key repeats for it, so that each keypress will be repeated twice. The patches, as mentioned above, may not work, but a workaround is possilbe. It is described in http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4253678

Simply add config = echo " > /dev/null before the main config in .mythtv/lircrc or .lircrc

So each 2nd keypress will be suppressed. This works in some application but not others (e.g. vlc).

Alternatively there is a patch for the kernel driver that solves it, it can be found here.

Finally if that doesn't work and you have the silver remote (A415-HPG-WE-A
) then changing the lircd.conf line as follows can prevent the duplicate key presses. This has the side-effect of disabling key repeats for the remote entirely. Change
toggle_bit_mask 0x80000000
to
toggle_bit_mask 0x00000000

Note: do not try to comment out (using #) any line in this file, or lirc won't work anymore.

Copy these keycodes just after the begin statement of your lircd.conf file.
You can leave the original keycodes, duplicated values are not a problem.
Once lircd is restarted, run the irw program and press your remote keys to show the missing codes: